Toolkits & Methods Working Group
established 2020
Working Group Description
This working group focuses on toolkits & methods to support interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, or crossdisciplinary processes in research, practice, or education. Our purposes are to:
- support successful use of toolkits & methods,
- deepen the debate on tools/methods/methodology and improve methodological research standards,
- build bridges – not only between toolkits – but also between communities,
- provide a platform for personal and professional development regarding tools, methods, methodology, & toolkits.
We welcome new members involved in developing and/or critically reflecting on toolkits and methods for inter- and transdisciplinarity. Please contact our co-coordinators, Dr. Keisha Taylor, Dr. Mahsa Motlagh, and Dr. Christine Hobelsberger.
Projects
Inventory Project
The project aspires to provide an overview over itd toolkits, understand how to adequately characterise ITD toolkits and tools, and explore what we can learn from such a characterisation.
Quality & Rigour Project
This project hosts reflective dialogs about criteria, indicators and dimensions for assessing the appropriateness / robustness / scientific rigour/ effectiveness of (combinations of) ITD tools.
Integration Tools Project
This new project will inventory and study tools that integration experts should know about.
More to Come…
The working group takes up ideas and interests of its members (e.g. diversity & multilingualism). Join us to learn more about emerging project ideas!
Previous Events
“The (re)generative uncertainty of transdisciplinary transformative research processes for sustainability”, Webinar, 2 March 2026
Date & Time: Monday, 2nd March 2026, 3 pm – 4:30 pm Central European Time, CET (Convert to your time zone)
Location: Online, Open to all
View Description
Transdisciplinary transformative sustainability research has seen a growing proliferation of toolkits aimed at supporting knowledge co-creation and intentional change toward just and sustainable futures. Yet, the assumptions and organizing principles underlying these toolkits remain poorly synthesized. Through an abductive category-level analysis, we identify two dominant organizing logics, functions, and process phases, and reveal convergence toward three overarching “doings”. These doings address relationships, knowledge, and inner worlds as interdependent dimensions of transformation. Speakers Andra Milcu of the Kassel Institute for Sustainability and Angela Moriggi of theUniversity of Padova argue that transformative tools are defined less by their epistemic outputs than by their enactment within reflexive, value-driven research processes, contributing to an extended methodology of transformative sustainability research that embraces uncertainty as a generative force. Presentations will be followed by Q&A and an interactive discussion. A recording will be available from the Toolkits & Methods Working Group web page after the event.
Speaker Biographies
Andra Milcu is a transformative sustainability scientist and professor at the Kassel Institute for Sustainability. She completed her doctoral work at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Before joining the University of Kassel in 2023, Andra Micu was a postdoctoral fellow at the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science and at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies Potsdam, and a Marie-Curie fellow at Babes-Bolyai University. She was a lead author for three of the assessments of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
Angela Moriggi is a rural sociologist, action‑researcher, and facilitator who has been working on transdisciplinary sustainability projects since 2013. She is currently affiliated with the Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry at the University of Padova. She recently completed a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship with the project VERVE (Co‑creative Visioning procEsses for tRansformative social innoVation in rural arEas). She is co‑founder of Re.imaginary, a platform collecting arts‑based methods for regenerative sustainability. Angela earned her PhD from Wageningen University with a dissertation on Green Care social innovation in Finland. https://www.angelamoriggi.com
Recorded on 2 March 2026. Webinar took place on Zoom: https://uni-kassel.zoom-x.de/j/9745432074?omn=65934548327.
Please feel free to contact the co-coordinators Mahsa Motlagh, Keisha Taylor, and Christine Hobelsberger should you have any questions or if you would like to collaborate on this topic or future activities of the Toolkits & Methods Working Group.
Our Journey: 2019 to Present
This working group was initiated after a workshop at the International Transdisciplinarity Conference 2019 aimed at “Creating a desired landscape of toolkits for inter-and transdisciplinarity”.
In December 2019, we had our first meeting, and since then new members have continuously joined the group. During our first year, we regularly met, discussed, crafted project ideas and presentations.
In October 2020, we began the official process of affiliation with the ITD-Alliance. We were positively evaluated and encouraged to further advance key questions of toolkits and methods.
In January 2021, we organized a virtual open space event to officially launch our working group. We had over 50 contributors and participants from 14 different nations across 5 continents.
During 2021, several working steps of the inventory project were realised: we developed a dashboard template, curated dashboards and created a pilot toolkit inventory. Subgroups have also been dedicated to issues such as diversity, rigour and interactive tools.
During 2022, subgroups are writing a reflection piece on lessons learned during our involvement in the inventory project, as well as working on visual ways to provide an overview of itd toolkits.
Beginning of 2023, we launched discussions on “what makes a method a good td-method?” as part of our “Rigour Project.” This activity is ongoing. In late 2023, the role of coordinator transitioned from our founding coordinator, Dr. Sibylle Studer, to Dr. Bethany Laursen.
In mid 2024, we published two articles:
- an entry in the Elgar Encyclopedia of Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity on “toolkits,” and
- a peer-reviewed article about “toolkitting,” showing that working with toolkits requires its own expertise and proposing shared projects that would improve the toolkit landscape. See also our blog post at i2Insights.
In 2024, we opened our call for “Community Pick” toolkits–high-quality ITD toolkits in any language.
In late 2024, we began partnering with the International Network for the Science of Team Science (INSciTS) Education and Training SIG and the Association for Clinical & Translational Science (ACTS) Team Science Professionals SIG to co-sponsor a new task group that will collect team science training resources. The collection will help expand the ITD Toolkit Inventory and support initiatives within ACTS and INSciTS.
In early 2025, we launched a member “meet & greet” event and re-launched the Rigour & Quality Discussions. On August 15, 2025, we transitioned our coordination leadership from Dr. Bethany Laursen to a co-coordinator model with Dr. Keisha Taylor, Dr. Mahsa Motlagh, and Dr. Christine Hobelsberger.